Category:

Less than two months after launching and following rumors of an outside investment, anonymous social network app Secret today officially announced it has raised $8.6 million. That’s a little bit less than the $10 million that it was rumored to be getting, but it’s also picking up some notable partners through the investments while the two co-founders, David Byttow and Chrys Bader, remain sole members of the company’s board:

TechCrunch and others had previously reported that Secret had closed a $10m round of funding at a valuation of $50 million.

While Secret’s notable organic growth over the last 45 days has been mostly among the early adopter crowd of techies, the company thinks there is a real opportunity to grow beyond its current audience. In its blog post announcing the funding, Secret also shared some insight to how people are using the app:

We’re now halfway there and have found a direct correlation between the number of friends a user has and their engagement on Secret. Notably, 75% of people with more than 5 friends come back every day. Furthermore, 90% of users that engage in a conversation come back within the week, often several times per day. Data like this reaffirms our belief that there is opportunity to build a platform around rich and unexpected conversations.

TechCrunch also reports that users are starting to see a new warning in the app. According to a co-founder, this warning is triggered whenever a name is detected in a Secret post and warns users not to defame others anonymously. The report notes that this is the first in a series of community management-focused changes coming to the app soon.